How This Deadly Mental Illness is Affecting Millions of Men - Dr. Ovidio Bermudez on CheatSheet.com

More than 30 million people in the U.S. are struggling with eating disorders. This week is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week (February 21-27), and as the deadliest mental illness impacts millions, it does not discriminate against any certain age, gender, race, ethnicity, or sexual preference.

According to the National Eating Disorders Association, 20 million women and 10 million men suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder at some time in their life in the U.S. alone, and an estimated 10-15% of people with anorexia or bulimia are male.

We spoke with Dr. Ovidio Bermudez, MD, chief clinical officer and medical director of child and adolescent services at Eating Recovery Center, who told us that eating disorders don’t differ significantly by gender, but while symptoms seen in both men and women might be similar, there are differences in how eating disorders are manifested in men as compared to women. “However, we see much more gender parity with binge eating disorder,” Bermudez said. “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) cites that the 12-month prevalence of binge eating disorder among U.S. adults is 1.6% of U.S. females and 0.8% of U.S. males. So, those statistics are approaching much more equal percentages of prevalence than those we see with anorexia or bulimia, for example.”